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What's wrong with "model and simulate the human brain"?

• frockington 8y ago
  We are also very close to solving world hunger by "Feeding People".
  • emiliobumachar 8y ago
    In my defense, the bar to clear was "a theoretical plan for how to architect such a thing even in principle". If that bar was hyperbole, then someone please give me the non-hyperbole version. I honestly don't know what level of detail of such plan people expect to be common knowledge in the imminence of its first success.
    • tim333 8y ago
      While I suspect frockington was being flippant we are close to getting rid of world hunger by feeding people as tech provides more food and money. >Today, more people die from obesity than from starvation (http://www.ynharari.com/book/homo-deus/ http://www.ynharari.com/book/homo-deus/) Also trying to copy mechanisms from the human brain is being done with some success by DeepMind. We are not quite up to running a decent brain simulation yet though.
• simonh 8y ago
  We don't know how to do that. Really. We have no idea how much detail the simulation has to have in order to work, and we don't have any way to actually capture the complete chemical state of a functioning human brain, while it is in operation, in order to prime the simulation. None of our current or projected theoretical scanning technologies are up to the task. We could capture the state of a dead brain, but that won't get us anywhere, for obvious reasons. Hypothetical invasive techniques would kill the patient long before sufficient data could be collected. Hand-wavey 'nano-probe' solutions are sometimes suggested, but again we have no idea how to design or build such things, and in reality we'd need to capture complete instantaneous snapshot data from every part of every cell of a brain to do it, which is absurd. It's no more valid than star trek technobabble.